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Syrian opposition seeks U.S. support for battle plans

By ROY GUTMANMcClatchy Foreign Staff

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Syria’s pro-western opposition has developed a plan to oust extremists of the self-styled Islamic state from their base in Syria and protect Syrian civilians living in rebel-held areas, but it is waiting for the Obama administration to give it a hearing, the acting defense minister said.

Nour Kholouf, a defected Syrian army general, said Islamic extremists who last month seized more than one third of neighboring oil-rich Iraq had become a greater threat to Syrian rebels than the regime itself, because they have moved into territory rebel forces have seized from the Assad regime and routinely cut off the rebels’ supply routes.

But he said rebel forces could force the extremists on the defensive and expel them from a part of the territory they now control in just three weeks of fighting, if the United States provides the necessary backing.

In a second stage, he said rebel forces could oust the extremists from the Raqqa region up to the border region between Syria and Iraq.

“I need weapons. I need money. I need a no fly zone or anti-aircraft weapons. I need intelligence data,” said Kholouf, who’s held the post since May in the Syrian interim government.

“We could kick them out of the Aleppo region in 20 days and force them back to the borders of the Raqqa region,” he said in an interview Friday. At that stage, the rebels must “take account of what weapons they’re deploying, and respond,” he said.

“But I can say confidently that if the American side makes the decision to end the Syrian crisis, we will have sufficient fighters.” In six months, he said, “we can bring security to 80 per cent of Syria.” There was one condition, he said: “that we are not left alone.”

Kholouf said he could deploy at least 100,000 rebel fighters if he could provide the weapons, ammunition and provisions to sustain them. Only about half are currently armed.

He said the transitional government is hoping to present its long-term vision and its short and middle range strategy to the U.S. side, but no date had been set. “We are working to arrange a meeting,” he said.

President Barack Obama has openly disparaged the Syrian rebel forces, saying they are incapable of defeating Assad or the Islamic State, but U.S. officials acknowledge that support for the rebels has been fitful and insufficient to test their capabilities on the ground. Two weeks ago, Obama announced he would ask Congress for $500 million to aid the rebels, but administration aides said the White House had no plan on how the money would be spent.

“When you get farmers, dentists and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad,” Obama told CBS last month, “the notion that they were in a position to suddenly overturn not only Assad but also ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy.”

He was responding to a question whether U.S. failure to provide adequate support to the Syrian rebels had created the vacuum that the Islamic State filled in Syria and Iraq.

Kholouf, a major general in the Syrian army before defecting to the rebels, blanched when a reporter quoted Obama’s reference to a “fantasy.”

“With its current resources, the FSA is unable to defend itself,” Kholouf said. “We are saying that there’s an imminent and future threat of terrorism that might destabilize this region for a decade — unless we and our friends put together a strategy to get rid of terrorism.”

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